Photo: Collected
The Olympic flame arrives in France on Wednesday (8 May) where a highly choreographed ceremony and a crowd of 150,000 people will be a first major test for organisers and security forces ahead of the 2024 Paris Games.
The transfer of the flame onshore in the southern port of Marseille will mark the start of a 12,000-kilometre (7,500-mile) torch relay across mainland France and the country's far-flung overseas territories.
Organisers are hoping the first public spectacle of their much-hyped "iconic" Olympics -- just 79 days away -- will help build excitement after a damaging row about ticket prices and ongoing concerns about security.
"It's something we've been waiting for for a very long time," chief organiser Tony Estanguet told reporters on Monday. "It's here. One hundred years after the last Games, the Games are coming home."
When the Paris opening ceremony begins on July 26, it will be the first time the city has played host for a century after previous editions in 1924 and 1900.
France sees itself at the heart of the modern Olympic movement after a French aristocrat, Pierre de Coubertin, revived the idea of the Games as practised by the Greeks until the 4th century BC.
After the Covid-hit edition in Tokyo in 2021 and the corruption-tainted Rio de Janeiro version in 2016, the Paris Olympics are seen as an important moment for the sporting extravaganza as a whole.
A measure of public excitement will come when the flame is handed over on Wednesday evening from the Belem, a historic 19th-century French tall ship that has made a 12-day trip from Greece.
"We are going to do beautiful, grandiose, sober and accessible at the same time," Marseille mayor Benoit Payan promised ahead of the ceremony, while recalling how his gritty port city was founded by Greek traders in 600 BC.
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